Buried treasure in Burma: Squadron of lost WWII Spitfires to be exhumed

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that's pretty sick... defiantly see where the A-10 got it's concept from

There's a superficial resemblance, but the two aircraft couldn't be more different. The A-10 was designed as a close air support platform. It's basically an armored bathtub with wings that has a tremendous lift capability, but doesn't put on a lot of speed. In fact, it's meant to fly slowly so that it can effectively engage stationary targets. The XF5F was a fighter that was designed to outmaneuver other aircraft, and which had a tremendous rate of climb due to an extremely high thrust to weight ratio. Unfortunately, the design had a flaw, in that the placement of the cockpit limited visibility, especially on landings. Grumman was working on a slightly more conventional redesign of the aircraft, but the prototype developed an engine malfunction and crashed.

The funny story about it was that while it was still in testing, Reed Crandall used it as the plane in the Blackhawk comic. This led the FBI to visit him at his studio, where they wanted to know how he knew about the highly classified prototype. During the interview, a Grumman pilot buzzed his house in the XF5F, at which point the chagrined agents packed up their stuff and left.

Originally Posted by Zathras

If I had a choice of WW2 aircraft to own it would be one of these 3....

The ME262 was a great fighter that was misused as a bomber, and was the fastest production aircraft flown during the war. The ME109 started out as a great fighter, but it was outclassed by the Spitfire and the Mustang, and by the end of the war, it was considered a death trap. The FW190 was the better fighter, but had smaller production runs, and so became less famous. I'd love to have a 262, but not the others. Of course, I'd also love a Mustang and a P-38 Lightning.